On 15 December 2017, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Trial Chamber II found Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, former President and Commander-in-Chief of the UPC/FPLC, responsible for reparations in the amount of USD 10,000,000 — the largest ICC reparations order issued to-date. The Lubanga case was the first to reach the reparations stage — yet controversy surrounding procedural requirements delayed the Chamber’s determination of Lubanga’s monetary liability. Last month’s decision answered some of these procedural questions, and raised new ones. This piece breaks down Trial Chamber II’s 15 December 2017 decision, and situates it alongside Trial Chambers’ recent assessments of monetary liability in the Katanga and Al Mahdi cases. We suggest that we have now seen ICC Trial Chambers assess defendants’ monetary liability for reparations via formal, functional, and intermediate approaches.

Lubanga was convicted on 14 March 2012 of enlisting and conscripting children under the age of 15, and using them to actively participate in hostilities from 1 September 2002 until 13 August 2003. On 7 August 2012, Trial Chamber I delivered the ICC’s first-ever order for reparations, authorising only collective reparations. On 3 March 2015, the Appeals Chamber overturned part of the Trial Chamber’s decision and issued an amended order for reparations, giving a newly constituted Trial Chamber II (composed of Judges Brichambaut, Herrera Carbuccia and Kovács) the confined tasks of a) determining the amount for which Lubanga was responsible, and b) monitoring and overseeing the implementation of the order. In its Judgment and order, the Appeals Chamber did not identify the number of victims who suffered harm as a result of Lubanga’s crimes. Nor had Trial Chamber I provided a figure in its original Judgment, although it found the crimes were widespread.

As explained in an article published last year, heated procedural debates soon emerged, as Trial Chamber II and the Trust Fund for Victims (TFV) clashed in their understandings of their respective mandates: while the Chamber believed it needed to identify and “approve” victims entitled to reparations as a prerequisite to determining Lubanga’s monetary liability, the TFV believed this was unnecessary, and something the TFV should do during implementation (the TFV had estimated there were 3,000 potentially eligible victims). Similarly, while the Trial Chamber believed that it needed to determine the extent of the harm caused to victims to establish Lubanga’s liability, the TFV thought that the extent of the harm was already described adequately in the Judgment, Sentencing Decision, and decisions on victims participation. However, in what appeared to be a change of its original position, the Trial Chamber acknowledged mid-proceedings that the victims identified by the TFV were a sample, but did not comprise the totality, of victims potentially eligible for reparations, namely those who suffered harm as a result of the crimes for which Lubanga was convicted. This shift proved foundational to the Trial Chamber’s 15 December 2017 decision. Read the rest of this entry…

On 17 August 2017, Trial Chamber VIII of the ICC issued its Reparations Order in the Al Mahdi case. The Chamber found that Al Mahdi was liable for 2.7 million euros for (a) the damage caused by the attack of nine mosques and the Sidi Yahia Mosque door; (b) the economic loss caused to the individuals whose livelihoods depended upon the tourism and maintenance of these ‘Protected Buildings’ and to the community of Timbuktu as a whole; and (c) the moral harm caused by the attacks, as illustrated by one of the victims quoted in the order: “My faith is shattered. My family fled [.] […] I lost everything and all my faith” (at §85).

The Reparations Order builds upon the reparations principles established in Lubanga and Katanga. However, it is also one of the few opportunities public international law has had to pronounce upon appropriate reparations for heritage destruction—forming part of the string of ‘firsts’ involved in Al Mahdi thus far.

Who is a ‘relevant victim’ of cultural heritage destruction?

The Chamber identified three groups of victims: the inhabitants of Timbuktu, as the direct victims of the crime; the population of Mali; and, notably, the international community. The latter category is a new element in the reparations jurisprudence of the Court, and its inclusion in the present Order seems to be mostly a consequence of the particular category of crime the Chamber was dealing with. Read the rest of this entry…

Reparations for victims of international crimes or serious human rights violations have received increasing attention from international courts. The most recent example is the Judgment on the Appeals against the “Decision establishing the principles and procedures to be applied to reparations” rendered by the Appeals Chamber (AC) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Lubanga on 3 March 2015. (See this previous post.) The present contribution compares how three key reparations issues are addressed by the ICC Appeals Chamber and by two other courts: the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). Besides the ICC, the ECCC is the only international or hybrid criminal court where victims can claim reparations. The IACtHR’s reparations case-law has been seminal for decades, and references to its case-law by the ICC and ECCC reflect an ongoing dialogue. The three issues on which the courts are compared are: who can claim reparations, who is obliged to pay reparations, and what reparations can victims obtain

Who can claim and benefit from reparations?

Under rule 85(a) of the ICC Rules of Procedure and Evidence (RPE), victims are “natural persons who have suffered harm as a result of the commission of any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court”. Only victims who suffered harm as a result of the crimes for which the accused was convicted are eligible to claim reparations against him/her (AC Judgment, para. 8). At the ECCC, rule 23bis(1) is the equivalent rule 85(a) defining victims. However, unlike the ICC, the ECCC rules and case-law require a direct causal link between the victim’s harm and the crimes for which the accused was convicted (rule 23bis(1); Case 002/01, Trial Chamber Judgment, para. 1114).

Given the absence of a direct causal link requirement before the ICC, the AC should have considered sexual and gender-based violence as harm resulting from the crimes for which Lubanga was convicted (AC Judgment, paras. 196-198). During his trial, there was robust evidence of sexual exploitation of minors by armed forces or groups. The UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict considered such sexual exploitation as providing essential support to the armed groups and, thus, as active participation in hostilities (Lubanga, Trial Judgment, para. 630). Accordingly, this sexual exploitation was arguably linked to the child soldiers-related crimes for which Lubanga was convicted. The AC should therefore have upheld the Trial Chamber’s finding of reparable harm from sexual and gender violence (paras. 207-209). Read the rest of this entry…